A warm welcome to all computer Oldi enthusiasts

With this home page I would like to introduce my projects which I developed exclusively in my leisure time or work on it if the necessary spare time is available. Exchange of experience is very important for me and I am grateful for every suggestion.

One important reason why I do these projects: General, a Hard-Disk has a life cycle but the Software never can die. When the children of our grandchildren are grown up, they should have a memory like the software worked in the period around 1970 - 1985. Among the vintage cars it was similar. The cars were forgotten and rusted. Many cars could not be restored. The remaining cars which have been restored are now a rarity and can only be found in special museum. In the computer area, it is even more complicated because there is Hardware and Software involved. It is critical now, the time is running out. At least 20% of RL cartridges are no longer usable ( too many bad blocks ). It looks much worse in the 8' floppy area, at least 80% are no longer usable. If all of these data should be saved, then it must happen in the next 5-10 years, otherwise all software will be lost forever.
Why I am doing all this things now? Well, it is pure hobby and similar as in the case of the veteran car supporters: One simply must like it. I professionally work in the server-high-tech area and have such a very beautiful compensation in my spare-time if I deal with the old technology. “I simply cannot keep away my fingers from oscilloscope and soldering irons“.

I primarily deal here with the PDP 11 systems and storage systems from Digital Equipment Corporation ( DEC ). Being the time left to traces here . Electrolyte-capacitor in power supplies often have dried out after 20-30 years which may result destroying the whole system if it will be powered up again. It is my primary objective now to replace system components by new technology. This is particularly important at the old Storage systems because the mechanics simply won't work any more and spare parts aren't available. It would be too a pity anyway if this old software is not able to run any more.

In the chapter 1. please find all information of my current project: Replacing a RL02 storage system by new technology with ARM7, SD-Card and FPGA/CYCLONII.

A warm thank-you to DR. Bernd Ulmann. He made it possible for me to set up this home page: http://www.vaxman.de/inhalt.html

By the way: You are on a DEC VAX-7000/820 running OpenVMS here!

I was born on March, the 19th, 1954 in Weiden . After I have finished school in Regensburg I worked as a trained television engineer with a parallel 3-year open/remote University course, “Digitale Elekronik“. Meanwhile I lived in Munich and after I had finished with the studies I worked for the company Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) at the age of 23 years from 1977 to 1994. At first I worked as field-support engineer in the area of the 12 bit based PDP-8 systems. Computers at this point in time did still work with core-memory and the service was very time-consuming adjusting for example core-memories with oscilloscope and current-probe. After 4 years I was specialized in the 16 bit PDP-11 systems primary with Q BUS architecture and worked for engineering ( CSS , Computer Special Systems ) and in the Field support with operational areas in all of Europe . My tools were Oscilloscope, logic Analyser, soldering iron and assembler programming with fields of application within all of Europe ( fly & fix ) at that time. I enjoyed my job very greatly and I was a happy employees surely above average engages. Also in my spare time I was concerned in detail with the computer architecture of DEC. I developed my projects parallel in my spare time in the period 1983-1987.